Although I "discovered" Roy Buchanan when I was a blues-loving kid in the mid-'80s, the guitarist's first brush with something resembling fame came in 1971, when a documentary, The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World, aired on public TV. The documentary was about Buchanan, a blues-rock virtuoso whose gritty, distinctive technique inspired scores of guitarists, including Jeff Beck.

Because the reception in the mountains was terrible and full of static, I couldn't hear it clearly. But it sounded like a "new" Stevie Ray Vaughan song; the guitar playing and the vocals sounded like the late SRV, who had died five years earlier. I could make out some of the lyrics, which included stuff like "I've been gone too long." It as if the late SRV was saying howdy from the grave.

Robert Johnson and J.J. Cale represent the yin and yang of Eric Clapton’s musical influences. On one side is Johnson, the famously troubled Thirties-era Mississippi bluesman who moaned about hellhounds on his trail, spooks around his bed and those lowdown, shakin’ chills. On the other side is Cale, the famously laidback singer-songwriter from Tulsa who penned laconic odes to singin’ whippoorwills, “chugalugging” and shakin’ tambourines.

Stevie Ray Vaughan released four studio albums, a live album and a Vaughan Brothers album, not to mention enough leftover live and studio material to fill several posthumous albums and a box set. He even found the time to perform on albums by several other artists — from Teena Marie to Stevie Wonder to Don Johnson — very often with fiery results.

Forty-eight years ago this summer — in late July and August 1966 — the Beatles found themselves in a touchy situation. On July 29 of that year, a teen magazine called Datebook published segments of a nearly 5-month-old interview with John Lennon. Among the republished segments was this quote by Lennon: "We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock 'n' roll or Christianity."

David knew Graham, and he came to our Crosby & Nash show in London a couple of times and liked our harmonies and our way of going at it, and he asked us to sing on [his 2006 solo album] On An Island. In the process, we got to be pretty close friends. He asked us to sing at his concert in London.